Renee wanted to see one of the side-rooms. The first thing she caught sight of on entering was M. Barousse's back, the back of an amateur in the very height of the excitement of the sale. He was seated on the nearest chair to the auctioneer, next to a picture-dealing woman wearing a cap. He was nudging her, knocking her knee, whispering eagerly his bid, which he imagined he was concealing from the auctioneer and his clerk, from the expert, and from all the room. "There, come, you have seen enough," said Mme. Mauperin, after a short time. "It's your sister's 'At Home' day, and it is not too late. We have not been once this year to it, and she will be delighted to see us." Renee's sister, Mme. Mauperin's elder daughter, Mme. Davarande, was the type _par excellence_ of a society woman. Society filled her whole life and her brain. As a child she had dreamed of it; from the time she had been confirmed she had longed for it. She had married very young, and had accepted the first "good-looking and suitable" man who had been introduced to her, without any hesitation or trouble and entirely of her own accord. It was not M. Davarande, but a position she had married. Marriage for her meant a carriage and servants in livery, diamonds, invitations, acquaintances, drives in the Bois. She had all that, did very well without children, loved dress, and was happy. To go to three balls in an evening, to leave forty cards before dinner, to run about from one reception to another, and to have her own "At Home" day--she could not conceive of any happiness beyond this. Devoting herself entirely to society, Mme. Davarande borrowed everything from it herself, its ideas, its opinions, its way of giving charity, its stock phrases in affairs of the heart, and its sentiments. She had the same opinions as the women whose hair was dressed by the famous coiffeur, Laure. She thought exactly what it was correct to think, just as she wore exactly what it was correct to wear. Everything, from her very gestures to the furniture in her drawing-room, from the game she played to the alms she gave away, from the newspaper she read to the dish she ordered from her cook, aimed at being in good style--good style being her law and her religion. She followed the fashion of the moment in everything and everywhere, even to the theatre of the _Bouffes Parisiens_. She had, when driving in the Bois, been told the names of certain women of doubtful reputation, and could point them out to her friends, and that made an effect. She spelt her name with a small "d," an apostrophe, and a capital A, and this converted it into d'Avarande. Mme. Davarande was pious. It seemed to her that God was _chic_. It would have seemed almost as improper to her to have no parish as to have no gloves. She had adopted one of those churches where grand marriages are celebrated, where people with great names are to be met, where the chairs have armorial bearings, where the beadle glitters with gold lace, where the